1940 Indian nationalists Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru as well as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the All-India Muslim League, demand India’s independence.
March 1940 Gandhi seeks a unified India after the British Raj is dismantled. Jinnah favours partition of India into Muslim and Hindu states.
1942 The British government ignore their demands, instead it calls on its colonies to give their full support as war rages in Europe.
August 1942 Gandhi, having stated his opposition to the British war effort, then starts a ‘Quit India’ campaign. This leads to his arrest. Demonstrations and violent protests follow.
1946 The British Raj begins to unravel as religious communities turn on each other. In Calcutta, Muslims fearing Hindu domination once the British leave call for a day of action. Thousands on either side die in the violence.
February 1947 The British appoint Lord Louis Mountbatten as last viceroy of India. His task is to transfer power as quickly as possible.
June 1947 Mountbatten declares that partition will go ahead.
July 1947 British judge Cyril Radcliffe draws up the border between India and Pakistan. The hastily devised plan, using out of date maps, cuts the Punjab and Bengal in half, creating an east and west Pakistan separated by more than 1,500 km (930 miles) of Indian territory.
August 1947 Separate states of Pakistan and India are born. Pakistan’s population will be mainly Muslim; India’s will be Hindu.
September 1947 Within days of partition, some of the worst sectarian violence in India’s history occurs. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs scrambling to get to their side of new borders clash, leaving an estimated one million dead.
